BOOKS
QUIETUS
From award-winning author Vivian Schilling comes a psychological thriller that raises provocative questions about fate, mortality and what lies beyond. Of epic scope, Quietus is the haunting story of a young woman brought back from the brink of death to find the world around her irrevocably altered.
On a stormy winter night a small plane bound for Boston goes down in the treacherous White Mountains of New Hampshire. Noted interior designer Kylie O'Rourke and her husband Jack are among the survivors. But it is just the beginning of the nightmare for Kylie. Through a haze of morphine she awakens in the hospital to confused and harrowing memories of the crash—memories not to be trusted. Though trapped within the wreckage, she recalls wandering the icy mountainside and speaking with one of the other passengers, only to find that he had died on impact. As the bizarre aftermath becomes sharper in her mind, it appears more ominous, along with the unshakable feeling that her survival somehow defied fate.
Reassured by her doctor that the disturbing memories had been caused by her sedation, Kylie returns to her life in Boston, but the aftermath of the tragedy proves unbearable. Frightening visions begin to haunt her, while her husband slips away from her into his own world of survivor guilt and deceit. Increasingly paranoid, Kylie soon believes that she is being followed through the streets of Boston. In her nightmares, the predator is a specter crossing over from the mountaintop to reclaim her. An old man eyes her in the subway, while a dark figure stalks her through Beacon Hill. Then a sudden and freakish tragedy sends Kylie's world toppling. While those around her fear she is losing her mind, Kylie finds herself caught up in a chain of events she cannot escape.
In this riveting novel, Schilling delivers a psychological thriller that leads the reader on a collision course where every breath, every step can carry the gravest of consequences. She paints bold and unforgettable characters, while resurrecting disturbing and powerful apocrypha that had been all but buried under contemporary religious doctrine. With spellbinding intrigue, Quietus takes the reader to the brink of reason, to the edge where spiritual and physical meet, building with frenetic momentum to its shocking and haunting climax..